A joke or a miracle? Residents sound off on the Austin council’s new committee system

For today’s story in the print edition about how the Austin City Council’s 10 committees have been working out, I interviewed the mayor and six council members (I reached out to all the council offices) and more than a dozen Austin residents who pay attention to what the council does. They couldn’t all fit in print, but they all had good points to make.

Here are some remarks that didn’t make it into the story:

Jennifer Houlihan, executive director of Austin Music People: “We’re hopeful about the committee structure. It’s still early and folks are continuing to become acclimated to this new system. We’ll really see the proof in the pudding, I think, when the consent agenda begins to get longer. We’ll see what happens at that point if the committee structure helps speed things through or if the meetings continue to run late into the evening. We’re cautiously optimistic.”

Ernesto Calderon, Raza Roundtable member and plaintiff in a 1980s lawsuit that challenged the city’s system of electing council members: Calderon had raised concerns at a public hearing on the committee system earlier this year. “At the time, the way I saw it, it looked like they were trying to keep a person from speaking to the whole council, and that wasn’t the case at all,” Calderon said. “We can still address the full council. I think it’s working out, a little better than before, because we have two avenues. We can go to the committee and the full council.”

Drivers for Uber and Lyft attended a Mobility Committee meeting in September.

Mary Ingle, Austin Neighborhoods Council president: “This is … a joke because the only people who can come during the middle of the day are retired people or people with flexible schedules or they’re paid to be there, so that’s the leisure class. That’s not a responsible way of getting public input. And then often times the meeting agenda isn’t posted timely, and the day changes and the time changes. So .. if you have a regular job and want to participate you can’t make plans to do that. So that’s not very democratic, and it’s not good government.” Ingle also said she and a certain lobbyist, who she doesn’t often see eye-to-eye with, are getting together to share their thoughts on the committees.

Mark Littlefield, political consultant and lobbyist: “Yes, one of the miracles of the committee structure is that it has brought Mary Ingle and I together.” Littlefield said there was good intent behind the committees, but the committees have in some cases veered from that original purpose: To review items that “needed more time to cook” and to study certain policy areas.

Dave Sullivan, veteran of the city’s Planning Commission: Sullivan said he’s generally in favor of the committees and noted that the Planning Commission similarly uses sub-committees. He said when the committees have been in place for a few years, the city should look at whether there’s any redundancy, as there’s both a Public Safety Committee of council members and a Public Safety Commission of council-appointed volunteers, for instance. “I still think it’s a good idea to have citizens who are non-elected and have time to concentrate in very specific areas give advice to council members,” Sullivan said.

Anti-fluoride activists showed up in full force at an August Public Utilities Committee meeting.

David Lundstedt, chair of the Animal Advisory Commission: Lundstedt was happy to learn this summer there’s a simple process of getting a commission recommendation on a committee agenda: Ask the mayor to assign it. Before, Lundstedt said, the commission seemed to be at the “mercy” of a committee chair to get an item on an agenda — especially when it came to a measure to ban bullhooks used to train and control elephants. “It kept getting delayed and pushed back whereas under the old system it would have gotten to council and passed in a couple months,” he said.

Melvin Wrenn, East Austin resident: Wrenn was a supporter of a proposal the council heard earlier this year to build two high-end golf courses by Lake Walter E. Long and has more broadly been pushing for economic development in East Austin. The committees haven’t been much help, Wrenn said, in part because there are no committees focusing specifically on issues of equity. But the larger problem, Wrenn said, is that council members just don’t understand eastern Austin. “I don’t know if you dropped an atom bomb would Austin wake up and say, ‘We need to do something,'” Wrenn said.

Paul Robbins, environmental activist and consumer advocate: Robbins recalled running into a council member at City Hall and saying something along the lines of, “You must be really mad at me. You haven’t met with me in months.” The council member said she didn’t have time for meetings because of the council committees, Robbins said. “And I said, ‘Why does it continue if it’s so bothersome?’ And she said, ‘It’s not up to me’ in a very frustrated way,” Robbins said.

Frances McIntyre, advocacy director of the League of Women Voters of the Austin Area: McIntyre said the committee process isn’t as transparent as she hoped it would be, as it’s tough for the average citizen to track when items come up at committee meetings and keep up with what the committees do. McIntyre also said, “A lot of discussions that go through committee come to council unresolved, so what’s the difference between just starting it at the council?” Still, McIntyre does like that the committees can spend a couple hours getting to the bottom of the issue.

Roy Waley, vice chair of the Austin Regional Group of the Sierra Club: Waley recalled the 1990 City Council meeting when more than 800 people came down to City Hall to speak against a proposed subdivision that would be along a waterway feeding Barton Springs. If the committee system had existed, meaning the council limited the number of speakers, Waley has his doubts that the same result — a vote against the subdivision — would have occurred. “I don’t like it any better than anyone else, hearing the 40th speaker say the same thing the last 39 speakers have said, but by God, you have the right to do that,” Waley said. “That is your right in this democracy.”

Girard Kinney, an architect who has testified on transportation and development issues before committees: “It was a brilliant idea,” Kinney said. He said he opposed single-member districts because “they often actually work against the objectives of people who supported the idea because they promote ward politics and individual council members wind up focusing on geographical concerns rather than city-wide concerns.” The 10 committees mean each council member is focusing on city-wide issues, Kinney said. But he’s concerned about how issues get divided among the committees. For one, he’d like to see a committee that tackles mobility and land use issues together, Kinney said. And there are some issues, such as affordability, that span several committees, he said. “There are some issues that need to be aired by more than one committee but aren’t getting aired that way,” Kinney said.

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